In 1995, the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) made a wealth of minute-by-minute radar-based flight tracking information available for distribution to the public with the creation of the Aircraft Situation Display to Industry (ASDI) service, which is now known as the TFMData available from the SWIM feed from the FAA. Through this service, flight tracking data is made available to several vendors from a single source. The TFMData includes the location, altitude, airspeed, origin, destination, estimated time of arrival and tail number or designated identifier of air carrier and general aviation aircraft operating on at least the corresponding IFR flight plans within U.S. airspace. General aviation VFR flights that include air traffic control flight following are often included.
In addition, other sources of flight tracking information have recently become available, including next-generation automatic dependent surveillance broadcast (ADS-B) information, which may be utilized independently or in combination with the TSMData data to provide the requested flight tracking information as well as information for other ground-based airport vehicles, such as fuel trucks, deicing trucks and the like. For aircraft, ADS-B provides real-time position information that is, in many cases, more accurate than the information available with traditional radar-based systems. ADS-B uses GPS signals along with aircraft avionics to transmit an aircraft's location from an on-board transceiver to permanent receivers located on the ground. The ground receivers then transmit that information to air traffic controllers, cockpit displays of other aircraft equipped with ADS-B avionics, and the like. An aircraft equipped with ADS-B also periodically broadcasts other relevant information such as the aircraft's identification, altitude, and velocity. Currently, this information is broadcast approximately every second.
The on-board portion of the ADS-B system relies on two avionics components: (1) a high-integrity GPS navigation source and (2) a datalink (ADS-B unit). There are several types of certified ADS-B data links, but the most common ones operate at 1090 MHz. ADS-B adoption has reached maturity as it is expected that most, if not all, commercial aircraft will be equipped with ADS-B equipment within the next year or so. In addition, a private corporation was awarded a contract in August of 2007 to build, install and maintain a nationwide network of ADS-B ground receivers. Typically, these ground receivers are located at, near, or are in direct communication with airports, as the system has an effective operating range of roughly 100 to 150 miles. Since approximately 2015, ground receivers sufficient to provide coverage for virtually the entire airspace over the continental U.S. have been in place.
The wealth of information collected by the ADS-B service, and other information collection systems like it, has led to the establishment of a number of online flight tracking services. Tracking flights via radar and ADS-B has provided great benefits, primarily that of keeping aircraft from colliding with each other. In addition, these advance tracking systems have aided and/or save many flights by enabling air traffic controllers to know where an aircraft is and to communicate with the pilot(s) in a variety of situations where historically those flights may have otherwise been lost.
These flight tracking services have led to numerous new commercial uses for flight tracking data, including allowing the general public to track flights, make decisions about when to head to the airport, providing data to aircraft operators, airlines, etc., for use in notifying the public and their employees about the status of flights, perform fuel burn analyses, make improved predictions of arrival times, automatically send notifications to people and software when flights depart, arrive, are diverted, incur delays, etc.
However, the information provided by these flight tracking services is limited in that it is heavily based upon flight tracking between take-off (i.e. wheels up) and landing (i.e. wheels down.). Even with all the value this has created, insight into the operation of aircraft while they are on the ground has been limited. Most people have had very little insight into what is happening during the time between when the aircraft is first powered up, pushes back from the gate or FBO, taxis to the departure runway, gets fueled or de-iced or transits customs, etc. Similarly, upon arrival, little insight is provided into ground operations conducted by the aircraft until it reaches its final parking place at the airport.
As a result, a significant portion of the aviation industry, including private aviation, continues to utilize tedious and time consuming traditional methods of ground-based aircraft tracking. For example, Fixed-base Operators (FBOs) routinely answer dozens of phone calls per hour from various flight coordinators within a flight department who seek information regarding the preparation of a plane for a flight, including removal of the plane from the hangar, arrival of a flight crew or passengers, or status of serving with a ground power unit (GPU). Upon passenger arrival, the flight crew is busy preparing the flight and does not need the additional burden of reporting their progress to the flight coordinators in their respective flight department. Consider that for very short flights an aircraft can spend more time taxiing than it spends in the air, while for short flights taxi times are a major portion of the total time of the flight, and even for long flights several percent of the total time is still occupied by the aircraft activity that occurs on the ground. Being able to track aircraft while they are on the ground and disseminate this information makes many new applications possible as well as allowing for more accurate estimated time of arrival calculations. Accordingly, there is a need for a system which to extends flight tracking from takeoff-to-landing to encompass all of the ground operations that occur prior to takeoff and after landing. Moreover, the system may be expanded to include other ground-based airport vehicles.